LIVERPOOL’S Freeport has more than three million square feet of warehousing with extra planned to accommodate the vast amounts of goods it handles.

There was great controversy when this container dock was planned in the 1960s. I was a young reporter on the Crosby Herald and remember the campaigns to stop it.

I was there when future Prime Minister Edward Heath visited in 1968 to watch early construction work. I had no idea just how much this new dock system would transform the port.

Two years later, as a Liverpool Echo reporter, I covered the traumatic financial crisis at the Mersey Docks & Harbour Board. This was followed by the closure of Liverpool’s south docks.

I interviewed top civil servant John Cuckney (1925-2008) at the Adelphi Hotel after he was appointed chairman of the docks board. He remained tight-lipped on that occasion.

However, Cuckney ruthlessly restructured and restored the viability of the Port of Liverpool, resulting in its resurgence and current successes.

I was reminded of these events when I recently spent a highly- enjoyable day touring the River Mersey and Liverpool’s docks on the Brocklebank, the Merseyside Maritime Museum tug dating from 1964.

We stayed in sheltered waters although the waves were dashing against the quaysides and white horses (crests of waves) were racing across the river.

Brocklebank is crewed and maintained by 17 enthusiastic volunteers, mostly former seafarers. The skipper is Colin Sandman and the chief engineer Gordon Whitehead.

We embarked from Huskisson Dock and sailed north though Canada, Brocklebank, Langton, Alexandra and Gladstone Docks. Here we entered the river followed by a huge Dublin ferry hauled by a modern tug.

We headed south to an area called The Deep between Bromborough, Wirral, and south Liverpool – one of the deepest parts of the Mersey.

Returning to the docks we explored the Freeport and had lunch moored next to a warehouse full of rolled steel destined for local car factories.

The Freeport, Britain’s largest, allows imported goods to be held or processed free of customs duties before being re-exported.

What struck me most throughout the docks was the eerie absence of people – the quaysides were virtually deserted. Huge machines clawed at scrap metal and coal while cranes hauled some of the 700,000 containers handled every year.

Brocklebank worked as a tug on the Mersey for many years but the arrival of huge container ships created the need for more powerful tugs. Brocklebank is the only working vessel owned by a UK national museum.

She went on goodwill visits to Ireland and the Isle of Man in August.

Buy the Maritime Tales book (£3.99) at the Merseyside Maritime Museum open seven days a week, admission free, and at bookshops, newsagents and merseyshop.com.